


let us be brave

by alpacas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Gen, SPOILERS FOR THE LAST EPISODE YA'LL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-06
Updated: 2019-11-06
Packaged: 2021-01-23 22:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,179
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21327895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: resurrection:you touch a dead creature that has been dead for no more than a century… if its soul is free and willing, the target returns to life.reincarnate:…the spell forms a new adult body for it and then calls the soul to enter that body. if the target’s soul isn’t free or willing to do so, the spell fails.revivify:you touch a creature that has died within the last minute…
Comments: 8
Kudos: 110





	let us be brave

Once when Veth was little, she’d been out in the fields too long hiding from her brothers, and it had gotten dark. It was a cloudy night, and the grass had been high as she was. She’d taken a few steps, terrified of each brushing of stalk against her, each crunch of vegetation. Crouched on the ground cold and hoped someone would find her. There, in all the quiet. All the wind and the movement of grass.

No one had come. She’d made her way, step by terrified step, back to the house alone.

She imagines being dead sometimes.

Not like _that_.

And not like Mr. Clay.

But grasping for a memory, for a fragment of it. Wondering. Beau talking about everyone’s deity’s, and Nott imagining she had one too. Not the Empire religion she’d known growing up. Something like Jessie, though. Not the weird cult obviously evil, possibly made up, part. But having a guy who looked out for you like she did.

She imagines it. Being dead. Which she pictures as kind of a big empty space. Sort of like the Bright Queen’s throne room, now that she’s seen one. All regal and shit.

A kind god leaning down towards her. This is your destiny, she tells Nott. You’ll see. I’ll fix it in the end. She looks a bit like Veth’s mother, in her imagining. But less tired. Kinder.

Nott’s never been one for imagination.

She imagines someone telling her: It’s okay. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. You can take a nap. It’s okay.

Beau ties her sash around her mouth and chin and ears. Jester mimes a finger to her lips, handing out pieces of paper. Nott runs her tongue over the tips of her teeth. Not enough to pierce. Just enough to feel it. She’s had the time to learn.

The magic here will paralyze you, Halas said. Sound will leave you frozen. She takes a fortifying sip of whiskey. Caleb is too busy to notice. He likes it here. That’s fine.

Nott imagines being paralyzed. Not moving or thinking or running on ahead.

Jessie writes her a note: OPEN THAT BOX! with a googly-eyed smiley face, which she underlines. Embellishes with gemstones and buttons: treasure. Nott’s already reaching for her lockpicks, the set she bummed from Beau a while back, the main pick bent to a comforting angle. Caleb is gesturing. Jester and Beau are giggling behind hands and scarves and backing away.

Nott —

She doesn’t think about it. She notices it, though.

She doesn’t let herself think about it.

She’s just…

Nott imagines paralysis like being made of stone. Not having to move or feel. Curling up at the bottom of Jessie’s backpack, asleep.

She tries the lock. The pick bends and catches.

That’s all.

Nott does bathe, actually. Keeps herself clean after a fashion. She gets a wet rag. Scrubs herself limb by limb. Grit helps if she has any. River sand. She doesn’t get that tight feeling if she does it this way — the panic rush, the pain of dying, no wet hair in her mouth, water in her nose, the taste of river-silt and blood and mud. Rubs her arms until the skin burns, then bandages herself back up, careful.

She hasn’t let Yeza see. Too much to explain. She’d just vanish off to Caleb’s room in the library when it came time to clean up. Wet her hair as much as she could stand and call it a bath. He doesn’t know. She hasn’t told him. He’s bound to have noticed. She hasn’t said, though.

When it rains, it always tastes like silt. Dirt and rotting plants and little stones and river slime. Even if it’s clean, it tastes like dying.

She remembers waking up, if that’s the term for it. There was no gentle coming to, no drift from unconsciousness to life.

There was nothing.

Then there was more.

She tries not to remember that part.

But it’s two years, now. Two years of not-remembering. Two years she’d be better off without. Two years of being something new, of being wrong and strange and sharp and bones. Two years dead. Going on three.

A year of having Caleb. Going on a year of Jessie, and Beau, and the others, and even Fjord.

All these years she needs to forget.

That time in the hotel with Caleb, he’d said: I want to tear time apart, because I miss my family.

She’d never heard it said like that. She hadn’t known. She didn’t know how to tell him, me too. I’d rip it all to shreds too, if it made me Veth. If I could go back. I understand. I know. I know. Don’t worry, my love. I’ll help. I’ll bring you home.

Bring me home too.

She remembers dying. The water. The blood.

The sharp fingers, pushing her deeper. Their furious, laughing faces, distorted by the water. She’d grasped and clung to wrists and arms, but her nails couldn’t catch on. She’d chewed them to the quicks in the cages.

She remembers that last breath. The pain of it. Water pouring into her throat and lungs. She remembers trying to exhale. To cough. To —

Nott crouches in that field. All moonless night, all shifting grass. She has goblin eyes now, goblin sight, yellow eyeballs shattering the dark, but the grass is too thick and too tall.

She thinks she hears voices. Don’t they remember not to talk?

She’s cold.

You can give up, the man says. If that’s what you really want. You have a choice here. Only you can make it.

If you do, you can rest. Curled up and off to sleep.

She’s not sure. She thinks he’s standing behind her.

If you don’t want to, things will be much harder.

It’ll be painful. You’ll be scared. You’ll get hurt. You’ll lose people you love. You’ll struggle and be sad and be angry and be frightened.

Or I can just give up?

It’s entirely up to you. No pressure.

She’s pretty sure she’s imagining this whole thing. She closes her eyes. Sees a closed box. A bent pick. Dusty, still air. Voices. Distant and distorted. She’s still underwater.

You don’t exactly make it sound appealing.

Sorry.

She stands up. The air is cloudy, thick with dust or silt. Even the way the grass sways looks like water.

Turns around. No one’s there.

Who’d do that? Give themselves up to suffering and pain and all that other shit you just said? All the bad things and the scary things, and the loss and death? All for what?

You know.

I do know. Fuck you.

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. Expecting pain and rending and terror and water.

Nott breathes in.

Musty paper and unwashed coat. Sugar-crystal magic burrowing warm into her skin.

Who’d, she asks, give up?

He smiles at her, even if she can’t see. Rustling grass and wings in the night. I suppose you’ll have to be brave.

Someone outstretches their hand.

Nott breathes out.


End file.
